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Tuscany or Umbria as a base in July for family of 4?

Posted by (seattle) on

There are a lot of threads about this topic, but I'd love to get feedback for our specific situation. We'll be traveling as a family (with 12 & 14 yr old girls) in mid July. We're starting out in Venice (3 nights), train to Florence (3 nights), then rent a car for 3 nights for a quiet stay near Orvieto (current plan). Then we'll return car and train to Rome for last 4 nights.

We already have this place booked (http://www.lachiusetta.it/) near Orvieto, but I can't stop thinking about whether we should change our base for this portion of the trip to Tuscany instead. We are really looking forward to some downtime after all the big city hustle & bustle and tours, so we'd prefer an area that won't be too crazy crowded with tourists that time of year. We'd love a farmhouse experience (pool a must) where they make you feel like part of a family, offer cooking classes, with easy access to other hill towns/areas to explore. We are adventurous, love nature, hiking, exploring, exploring quaint towns, etc. (and will drag our kids while we do some wine tasting, but that can't be all we do).

Questions:

  • Is Umbria generally less crowded than Tuscany in mid July?
  • If we decide to stay in our current farmhouse, what towns/ cities should we visit for day trips? (other than Civita di Bagnoregio - we really want to check that out)
  • I love the idea of visiting places like Siena, Montepulciano and Montalcino, but don't want to be in the car all day. Do you think it's doable to do a big day trip where we hit a few of these towns from our base near Orvieto?
  • We're planning to train from Florence to Orvieto and rent our car there... is that what you'd recommend?

Thanks in advance for any tips/suggestions!

Posted by
27230 posts

For the places you list as side trips, I think the Orvieto area is convenient mainly for visiting Civita de Bagnoregio. Siena is really a whole-day (or more) destination, and it's a 4-hour roundtrip from Orvieto; it certainly shouldn't be combined with a second destination. Montalcino is estimated at over 1-1/2 hours one-way by ViaMichelin, and people say those are usually underestimates. Montepulciano is over an hour from Orvieto. With a more northerly origin it's possible you could combine those last two towns; I've never been to either one.

I like Orvieto a lot, but for your purposes it is less than ideal. And if you're staying out of town, I'm not sure you're going to get much benefit from Orvieto's charm. I was there in June 2015, and it was pretty busy even then. Looking back, I think there were more tourists (probably Italians) on weekends. It's easily close enough to Rome to make a nice weekend getaway.

I'm sure there are places within 45 minutes or so of Orvieto that would be worthwhile day-trip destinations, but I've never had a car available to me, so I haven't done much exploring. The town of Bolsena on the lake of the same name is pleasant enough and has a very old district on a hill overlooking the current tourist development. There's also a castle up there. The bus to Bolsena bypassed the hilltop town of Montefiascone, but I didn't get close enough to say more than that it looked old.

Posted by
7175 posts

It's about the same distance from Siena to Montepulciano as it is from Montepulciano to Orvieto. I would perhaps choose somewhere more central, close to Montepulciano, and attempt this ...

Day 7 - Early start from Florence to Siena. Late afternoon drive on to somewhere near Montepulciano (3 nights)
Day 8 - Montalcino & Pienza
Day 9 - Montepulciano
Day 10 - Early start for drive to Orvieto. Return car before evening train to Rome.

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